Professional Information

Paul Josephson, Colby’s Russian and Soviet history professor, is a specialist in the history of twentieth century science and technology, and also studies the philosophy of science and Neo-Luddism. He has written twelve books, most recently a history of everyday objects from soda cans to bananas to sports bras. His first book was a cultural and political history of the Leningrad physics community from 1900 until 1940. He then turned to a comparison of the fate of scientists under Hitler and Stalin, writing about this fate in a short textbook, Totalitarian Science and Technology.
Josephson has written other books (see links below): New Atlantis Revisited, about the Khrushchev-era Siberian city of science, Akademgorodok, which won the Shulman Prize of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies; Red Atom on peaceful nuclear programs in the former Soviet Union; Would Trotsky Wear a Bluetooth? on technological utopianism under socialism; and most recently The Conquest of the Russian Arctic. (Please see “Publications.”)
The study of such large scale technological systems and their potential extensive environmental damage led Josephson into environmental history. He also teaches on Science, Race and Gender. His research takes him to Russia, Ukraine, Brazil, Norway, Jamaica, and elsewhere. (Please see “Course Offerings.”)
Josephson has stood on nuclear reactors in the former Soviet Union, jumped into icy Arctic water after a sauna, and eaten slightly radioactive mooseburgers. He has visited the industrial forest of Maine to examine the technologies of clear-cutting. He has poured his own concrete, and visited the world's largest hydroelectric power stations to understand the implications of the stuff.

Current Research

Josephson is working on two books, a history of speed bumps, and a history of major nature engineering projects in the former Soviet Union, 1900-present, called Stalin's Water Workers.

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